Star Wars Shatterpoint: Deep Dive into Ki-Adi Mundi

Last year brought Shatterpoint some fascinating new models and amazing reworks, keeping our competitive season fresh. Today, I want to talk about one of the most powerful primaries in the game and how to build around him.

That’s right, we are discussing our favorite conehead, Jedi Master Ki-Adi-Mundi.

How He Plays

Now I don’t want to besmirch the other Jedi Primaries out there. They all have their uses and can easily be played at a competitive level in my opinion. The issue is that all of their best pairings likely involve Ki-Adi who elevates Jedi synergy to the next level. Ki-Adi-Mundi is a powerful leader who promotes synergy, high efficiency attacks, and diceless displacement.

I would say that Ki-Adi-Mundi is one of the most well balanced primaries in the game. When considering him, you are really saying that you want to play a Jedi focused team in the Galactic Republic era. This means that you are focused on powerful melee attacks and force pushes to take points. It also means you can easily put yourself in a terrible position if you aren’t considering placement.

But let's try to oversimplify his stats into some arbitrary numbers.

Synergy - 9/10

Movement - 6/10

Power - 7/10

Attrition - 6/10

Map Control - 7/10

These numbers will fluctuate depending on who you pair Ki-Adi with but overall, everything the Jedi lists have to offer is an above average option. You can play a more defensive game with Obi-Wan but that requires more clone support then Jedi. Perhaps you want to control the battlefield with force pushes? Then I recommend Plo Koon; however, his identity isn’t impactful enough for me to consider him a top tier pairing.

No, if you read Ki-Adi’s identity, you will see his primary strength is in the force discount he offers and mobility with Jedi on wounds. Therefore the best pairings are Jedi models that want to abuse force abilities and maximize the movement potential by wounding your enemy. The best primary is clearly Anakin. I will also pitch a list using Luminara Undali because she can maximize the potential for wound triggers even further with her own global dash.

Why Play a Ki-Adi Mundi Kill List?

But before I go showing off lists, I want to cover why you should play Jedi as a concept. When looking at Ki-Adi, you likely don’t really see a murder machine. Yes, he can hit plenty hard as his expertise is phenomenal! However, he is slow and offers little in the form of status effects. Being a melee only character, it’s often you find Ki-Adi unable to impact the models you want him to. His abilities all seem defensive in nature with super deflect to scare off enemies and force push to take zones without needing to attack.

When you play a Ki-Adi kill list specifically, you are doing it on the back of other models to take advantage of his identity. As a model, Ki-Adi is extremely well balanced (even if he is a little slow) but it’s the lists you can build to take advantage of his identity that make him so frightening. I recommend playing these lists if you want to increase your team's efficiency and punish your opponents when they fail.

List Building

This list has some key models that you must take every time. Yes, you can swap the supports out for Padawan Learners or maybe even remove Ashoka for Rex, but Shaak Ti and Anakin are an absolute must. I personally like to put ARF with Anakin but it’s dealers choice on how you want to play.

On paper, this card really doesn’t seem that great. She has low health and average expertise. She can’t even hit that hard because she moves strikes to crits meaning you rarely get strikes through and are relying on 2 to 3 crits on your attacks. That being said, she is an auto-include in this list as the extra starting force, in conjunction with Ki-Adi’s force discount, allows you to play reckless. Her diceless displacement is also top notch and usually means you will take any point she sets her mind to. You will almost never have a bad turn with this model unless she is just drastically out of position. I once tactic jumped her, full advanced, then hunkered onto point just so I could force repulse. Yeah I didn’t get to attack but her goal is to take points, not get wounds. If you want to talk about models that get wounds…

It’s easy to say that the chosen one got the chosen glow up of the season. His attack is ferocious and his identity is a massive momentum swing. Every wound he gets vs a secondary or primary, will result in 4 of your units getting to dash. If you pair this with Ki-Adi, you will also get a bonus heal and dash on any Jedi. Did I mention the force refresh? Ki-Adi is the enabler but this model is your hero. You will shatterpoint him almost every time and you will likely have between 4 to 8 wounds from him alone. Anakin pairs specifically well with Shaak Ti, Ashoka, and ARF because you need to get him into melee as soon as possible. All of those models can assist in his moving up the board. Use his ranged attack while within range 5 of an ARF trooper to generate a dash. Then if you dash to be within melee of a model, spend that 2 force to allow him to “end this”. The play pattern with this list is to cater to Anakin in whatever way you can.

Other List Options

Personally, I love Luminara as a model. Yes, she is not as impactful as Ani but she does have some tricks. When pairing her with Ki-Adi, you do so with a different tactic in mind. You still want those wounds because every wound now means two dashes but you have to have a model that can reliably get those. The heals also forces your opponent into focus firing down your units or lose to attrition as Lumi heals them back up.

You will notice a lot of similarities in this list to the Anakin one but instead of supporting the primary, we are now funneling kills through Crosshair. And while Anakin moves a ton of models on his wounds, this list allows ANY wound to move ANY model giving you an immense flexibility in where you want to apply pressure. The typical play pattern is to move up Commandos within coordinated fire range and pop a support with Crosshair. The breakpoints to wounding supports these days tends to be 8 damage. Crosshair can do that with 4 successes if you use his tactic and get 2-3 expertise. Add the coordinated fire into the mix, and he now only needs 3 successes. Personally, the more you can increase efficiency on a model, the better and that goes double when you desperately need wounds to activate your game plan. A perfect opening with this list is to pull crosshair, ping a support on the opposite side, advance up to finish them off, then double dash Lumi onto a point. Luminara and Ki-Adi are both relatively slow melee models with only a single extra dash to aid them. Trust me, you need those wounds.

Tactics and Strategy

This is my favorite part because I’ve always been an experiential learner. I’m going to lay out a scenario that has happened to me while playing Luminara with Ki-Adi to help demonstrate their lines of play. In this example, we were playing on shifting priorities. I had won the first struggle and was just starting the second. My first flip was Luminara who I assumed would have a hard time doing anything useful. I had every intention to just hunker her onto my back point and wait for struggle 3 however, I began to recognize the movement potential this list could have.

Luminara starts on the bottom left but wants to contest the top right point.

There were other models on the board but for simplicity sake, I only put the ones relevant to this situation. The coverts were split in the middle and top left. My ARFs were in the middle. My Ki-Adi was on the middle right and Shaak Ti was contesting the top left but not at the right elevation. The Mandalorian held the top right point.

With a reposition from her tree, she can easily reach the middle ingress point.

The action I ended up taking was an advance to hit the ingress and engage the coverts. I attacked with 7 dice, needing only 2 success to wound. I supporting fire dashed with my ARF trooper allowing Luminara to reposition off her tree then dash again.

This reposition let Luminara ingress up and dash back down for some extreme movement. I still had a force to spend for a dash so I could contest the top right point but really, it was the wound that set everything in motion. The wound triggers allowed the ARF trooper to dash with Luminara’s identity onto the bottom middle point. Ki-Adi trigger gave himself the dash he needed so I could double body the top right point. Then Shaak Ti claimed the top left objective because the coverts could no longer contest. This was a massive 4 turn swing with a model that is arguably one of the slower ones in the game.

The end result of a wound against the coverts. All 4 points have been flipped!

Playing a kill heavy list demands that you consider the options instead of always going for the safe play.

Mission Select and Matchups

Shifting Priorities

This mission favors players who want to swarm points and strike out on struggle 1. Anakin has the potential to swarm points if he can get a wound on the proper model but I wouldn’t say that’s enough to strike out to an early lead. You need to be quick with this mission and the setup might take you too long.

Good Matchups

Rebel Revenge - I wouldn’t say that rebel revenge is ever a great matchup however, if you are going to play them anywhere, you should probably play them here. You have diceless displacement as a method to remove pesky models without wounding and because Revenge lists are often slower than attrition, your big Anakin plays often end up with great results. Plus if you get a wound with Anakin, you get to move your models at the end of the round which makes it harder for a Kanan shot to disrupt your gameplan short of wounding you back.

Obi Wan - A fantastic model that is good at sticking on points but the one weakness clones have is dying. Bullets… their one weakness…… Let them try to spread out and take the middle line, crosshair will gladly ignore those hunkers and pick off the clone supports.

Bad Matchups

Swarm - This is a generic response but any lists that can take the midline before you is going to be tough to deal with. Ewoks, Iden Empire, or even Separatists will all throw their supports out there and demand you answer them now or lose struggle one quickly. If we have learned anything about shifting priorities, it's that you don't want to lose struggle one.

Sabotage Showdown

The struggle on here is slow and demands patience. It favors heavy shatterpoint swing turns to score 4 or 5 points and often consolidates all the fights in one of two zones. Overall, Ki-Adi loves this scenario because he has amazing displacement options and doesn’t have to worry about the mobility of hitting far out points.

Good Matchups

Mandalorian / Attrition - It's easy to combat a list that wants to just sit on a point and hope they are sturdy enough to weather the storm. Paz is an example model that is intimidating to attack into but Ki-Adi doesn't need to worry about that. Low health secondaries are prime targets for Anakin or even Crosshair despite the tanky expertise but if you don't want to deal with them, just force push them away.

Bad Matchups

Cassian - There is going to be a trend here where Cassian isn't really what you want to see when playing Ki-Adi Kill lists. In this case, Cassian can easily maneuver his models onto the middle points and has a strong impact with "This Town is Ready to Blow." When there are 6 active objectives, it's not unreasonable for him to hit every model you have after struggle one. He also appreciates the force refresh that Sabotage can potentially offer.

Never Tell Me the Odds or First Contact

I like to combine these even though they do have some different sticking points. Mainly, I want to consider scenarios that are spread wide and force higher mobility. On this mission, a simple dash doesn't get you to many active points. Some of the best individual models are going to be primaries that can double advance themselves or advance a support/secondary. Han Solo, Iden, Leia Freedom Fighter, Armorer, ect are all characters that have high mobility and can benefit from a spread map.

Good Matchups

Galactic Republic - Most all Jedi primaries from this era are slow and can't apply effective pressure. You have the advantage of gaining dashes on wounds but there are going to be slight variations in Ki-Adi that are probably best here. Vader 1 with Ki-Adi is likely a better pick then Anakin here because of the double advance from Darth Vader but also because it gives your entire list more punch instead of relying on 1 or 2 models that might be out of position. Overall, most GAR lists are going to be worse then what Ki-Adi can do here.

Bad Matchups

Cassian - This model can advance anything on a wound which is exactly what you need for never tell. It doesn't help that our gameplan is to wound for our own advantages which Cassian will gladly take advantage of. If you see Cassian paired with anything under the mission Never Tell, I would highly recommend putting Ki-Adi on the bench.

Final Thoughts

This article might be a little more vague then some of my other ones but that's because Ki-Adi Mundi has an amazing strength in his versatility. Whatever list you want to put him with, he can boost it's effectiveness. There are plenty of powerful models in the game right now but in my opinion, Ki-Adi Mundi is in the top two of primaries to build around with Cassian being the only other competition to him.

Playing Ki-Adi is a wise choice!

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Tags: competitive | Star War Shatterpoint | Jedi